Future ministers learned about cognitive impairments and how to support their congregants during a new elective course offered by Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology this spring. Taught by Dean Dr. Greg DeLoach, “Dementia, Disabilities and Differences” primarily focused on dementia but also explored mental illness and other cognitive-related disabilities.
The course will be offered every other spring, alternating with the School’s death and dying class.
In today’s cognitively-focused culture, people who lose their intellectual capabilities and memory are often devalued or “othered,” Dr. DeLoach said. The course aimed to provide students with skills and technical understanding that will give them greater empathy and sensitivity in their pastoral work.
“Dementia and mental health tend to be topics that people don’t want to talk about but they need to talk about. So (we’re) equipping students to create conversations in communities so that ministries and services can be cultivated to respond to the needs,” Dr. DeLoach said.
“This is also important to me. My wife’s mother died of Alzheimer’s. My father is on a dementia journey. These are not just theoretical spaces. I’ve lived it as a pastor for 30 years. You’re going to engage this if you engage a larger community. The better we are prepared, the better we can respond.”
Tricia Etheridge, who just graduated with her Master of Divinity, said the course blended multiple areas she is connected to and passionate about. As a pediatric physical therapist for about 30 years, her work had a strong neurological focus. In addition, her late mother had dementia, and the church she attends in Haddock is seeing more congregants with dementia or caring for family members with dementia. She wanted to learn what tools could be used to help address the challenges.
Some studies show that people fear dementia more than death, and students in the class unpacked those feelings during “emotional and evocative conversations,” Dr. DeLoach said. For their final project, they considered what a dementia diagnosis would mean for their own identity, how it would look in their lives, and how they would want to be cared for.
“Overall, I think it was a great success. The student engagement was superb,” Dr. DeLoach said.
Students explored the subject matter through books, articles, blogs, podcasts, films, discussion posts and guest speakers. Dr. Leslie Taylor, College of Health Professions physical therapy professor and director of the University Center for Gerontology, explained the science behind dementia; and Dr. Lynn Pierce, a College of Professional Advancement assistant professor of counseling whose research focus areas include disability identity development, talked about disability awareness.
Each student gave a class presentation, and Etheridge spoke on helping to establish a faith and wellness ministry focused on dementia and mental health care at her church.
Another key component of the course was a field trip to Milledgeville’s old Central State Hospital campus. Once called the Georgia Lunatic Asylum, it opened in 1842 and at its peak was the largest state-run mental health institution in the world, housing 12,000 patients. It closed in 2010, after decades of decline following deinstitutionalization efforts.
“It’s a decaying campus, so it kind of serves almost as a metaphor of mental health care in our country and some of the neglect we continue to deal with. So it evoked a lot of good conversation,” Dr. DeLoach said. “We can look back and say, ‘Gosh, wasn’t that barbaric?’ In some respects, it was society’s attempt to respond doing the best with what they understood.”
Jessica Whitehead, a mental health advocate who has documented the deterioration of the hospital campus through her photography and book project “Seeking Asylum,” served as the tour guide for the Mercer group. She curated a museum exhibit that opened a year ago at the train depot on the hospital’s campus. In addition, Whitehead worked in mental health for about 14 years before taking on roles with the court system, first with juvenile court and now with Superior Court.
During the tour with the Mercer students, she shared the history of the hospital as well as her personal mental health journey.
“To get to connect to people individually and let them see a story up close and personal aids so much in the educational experience,” she said. “It’s poignant — connecting that book knowledge with that real-world experience knowledge. I was happy to be a part of that and be a mental health advocate with them and to hear their thoughts about what they have been learning.”
Etheridge grew up in Milledgeville and moved back about four years ago. Her father worked and retired from Central State Hospital.
“It was a campus I knew well as a child and teenager,” she said. “The opportunity to go there and see it and to understand what was here and what it looked like in the past was a really unique space for me to come and sit in. I was really glad that (Dr. DeLoach) incorporated that into the class because it’s such a place of history and understanding of the evolution of management of mental health and mental illness.”
